“Family Portrait” depicts the artist surrounded by his family – his wife, children, parents Beya Ben Said and Hédi Khayachi and parents in law Hasseina Khaznadar and Ismail Bey. The family is all there. Khayachi, his wife, his two daughters, his son and all his paintings show how much this is an extended family. He himself is in the picture, and the balance between the five human beings and the five paintings is clear, but other stretchers holding canvases are seen from behind, the paintings turned to the wall. But this is a lovely nosegay. Canavas within canvases, paintings within paintings, and there is the artist in full command.

Taj El Molk sits for her father, who seems to muse on his daughter as much as on the picture. Numerous points of light illuminate a room whose window is closed.

This vision of the intimacy of the artistic mystery supports the thesis that Khayachi saw no dividing line between art and the family but that rather there was an interplay between them, with each finding its identity in the other. There was no divorce, no dichotomy, no hiatus. Khayachi painted in a serene world where his art in fact strengthened his role as paterfamilias. Indeed, he gave new life to those dear to him, whom he had begotten both in fact and on canvas. ‘Family happiness, artistic happiness’ should be the title of this painting, which displays the extraordinary extent to which family and art were for Khayachi two faces of the same coin.

In “Portrait of Taj El Molk Bey”, Khayachi honours the ancestor cult so dear to Tunisians. And he goes a step further, hinting that the large family houses of Tunis were ruled not by men but by women. Authoritarian, almost haughty, Taj El Molk Bey looks out from the picture with pride at the artist who has stolen her likeness.

This painting underlines the fact that Tunisia used to be a matriarchal country in many ways. The look that she gives us, both benevolent and lordly, reminds us that in olden Tunisia it was the old people who ruled the family. The grandmothers laid down the law, and their sons and daughters-in-law accepted it.  These women used to rule the home from inside, respected for their culinary knowledge, their craft work, and their stories. They preserved harmony and peace within the home, handed down wisdom and kept the family unit balanced and cohesive. These grandmothers were like queens in the ancient realm of Tunis; Khayachi’s picture celebrates their power and force.

A “Self-portrait” in pencil shows a dreaming Khayachi. Teacher and researcher have merged and each brings out the best in the other. Another self-portrait shows a much more sensual Khayachi, looking out onto life. Somewhere between the man with the closed face and the man with the open, sensual face is the real Khayachi, with two facets to his personality, one turning inwards to solitude and the other outward to the rest of the world. Just like his fixation with the interplay of light and dark, of one thing and its opposite, of the family and art, so he portrays the links between a man who loves life and one turned in on himself. He has understood that in the mystery of art and life only painting can help him accept the absurdity of the human condition and give it meaning.

In this self-portrait we discover an older Khayachi, ready to confront old age with serenity. He wears his decorations humbly, and looms up out of the obscurity of the picture with a lovely, tranquil light on his face. His clasped hands reveal that he will accept whatever fate throws at him with a peaceful heart.

At the top of his form, Khayachi used secret formulae to concoct wonderful paintings. What power and authority emanate from these paintings dedicated to the former sovereigns of Tunis! We see Khayachi not only as someone who has studied Titian but as a professional painter from the School of Fine Arts, trained to follow in the footsteps of the great masters of western art, and a worthy son of a worthy father. He painted a magnificent series of portraits of rulers of the Hashemite dynasty, from 1705 to 1957. His great learning and culture gave birth to these works of art.